World should not worry about India’s banking sector: Pranab

Kolkata, Nov 13 (IANS) Reacting to the rating agency Moody’s decision to downgrade India’s banking sector to negative, Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee Sunday said the international community need not be worried about the health of the sector.

“The international community need not be unnecessarily worried about the health of the Indian banking system,” Mukherjee said during a conference on ‘Global Economic Turmoil and Indian Economy’, organised by industry body Assocham here.

The Indian banking system had recently been downgraded by the Moody’s from stable to negative.

Mukherjee assured that the budgetary provisions for banks’ re-capitalisation would be released within the current fiscal.

He, however, said he was not very hopeful about the quick resolve of the sovereign debt crisis of Europe and there could be an adverse impact of it on India’s exports as well.

The finance minister assured that the government was carrying out reform process to keep the economy on track.

“Despite political divergences of the people, we have got approval on three major drafts from the Standing Committee on Finance. They are - PFRDA (Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority), Factory Bill and some amendments on banking loan. I am quite hopeful that the Direct Tax Code (DTC) will also be approved by them and in the next financial year we will be able to introduce those,” he said.